Blessed

I've just watched a particularly emotional episode of One Born Every Minute, this programme is amazing (read my post on the last series), but this week especially, it made me realise how lucky I am.

I have a partner who loves me, who loves me so much that in two weeks time we're getting married! There was a 17 year old girl, whose birth partner was her Mum because her real partner was in prison. Her whole story was so sad, she'd said she didn't want children until she was 28, she wanted to live first, but had fallen pregnant by accident and wanted to do the right thing and keep the baby.

My birth was straight forward, and lasted 4 hours from start to finish. The other Mum was having her second baby, everything was going fine until the baby's shoulders got stuck. There were some agonising minutes when the whole team of midwives worked to deliver the baby. All was fine in the end but as I watched, on the edge of tears, I felt so blessed to have had such an easy labour.

One Born Every Minute

Every minute of every day a baby is born in Britain...

I'm addicted to this TV show. It's on Channel 4 here in the UK and follows real-life birth stories in Southampton Hospital. The first series started last year when I was pregnant, at the time I didn't want to watch, I was terrified that it would be too graphic and put me off the inevitable pain I knew I would have to face! (Read my birth story here). However once Charlie was born and I had sooo much TV time whilst breastfeeding, I watched the whole of the first series on 4OD and was hooked from the first episode. Now we're nearing the end of the second series and if we're at home I watch them on my Friday's off whilst Charlie takes his morning nap.

If you're a Mum you'll know that once you've given birth all your emotions are heightened and suddenly you become emotional about anything to do with babies and birth (well it did for me anyway). Stories that stick in my memory are the triplets in series one, two were healthy but one was really ill, the poor Mama couldn't buy a pram until she knew if her littlest one would make it as it would break her heart to buy a 3 seater pram and then not use it for all 3 babies. It was a happy ending in the end but the poor little guy had to spend months in hospital. Another story followed a 17 year old who asked whether babies came out smelling of baby powder (!) and my favourite was a water birth with the mother's squeamish older sister in the room, she pulled the best 'shocked' faces ever.

Here's me and my baba, I can't quite believe that in a month and 2 days time it will have been taken a year ago!